Part 1

LOW TIDE ON GRAND PRÉ

LOW TIDE ON GRAND PRÉ: A BOOK OF LYRICS: BY BLISS CARMAN

CHARLES L. WEBSTER AND COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK MDCCCXCIII

COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY BLISS CARMAN. (_All rights reserved._)

PRESS OF JENKINS & MCCOWAN, NEW YORK.

The poems in this volume have been collected with reference to their similarity of tone. They are variations on a single theme, more or less aptly suggested by the title, _Low Tide on Grand Pré_. It seemed better to bring together between the same covers only those pieces of work which happened to be in the same key, rather than to publish a larger book of more uncertain aim.

B. C.

_By Grand Pré, September, 1893._

CONTENTS

PAGE

LOW TIDE ON GRAND PRÉ 11

WHY 15

THE UNRETURNING 18

A WINDFLOWER 19

IN LYRIC SEASON 21

THE PENSIONERS 23

AT THE VOICE OF A BIRD 27

WHEN THE GUELDER ROSES BLOOM 31

SEVEN THINGS 44

A SEA CHILD 47

PULVIS ET UMBRA 48

THROUGH THE TWILIGHT 61

CARNATIONS IN WINTER 63

A NORTHERN VIGIL 65

THE EAVESDROPPER 73

IN APPLE TIME 77

WANDERER 79

AFOOT 89

WAYFARING 94

THE END OF THE TRAIL 103

THE VAGABONDS 111

WHITHER 118

TO

S. M. C.

_Spiritus haeres sit patriae quae tristia nescit._

LOW TIDE ON GRAND PRÉ

The sun goes down, and over all These barren reaches by the tide Such unelusive glories fall, I almost dream they yet will bide Until the coming of the tide.

And yet I know that not for us, By any ecstasy of dream, He lingers to keep luminous A little while the grievous stream, Which frets, uncomforted of dream—

A grievous stream, that to and fro Athrough the fields of Acadie Goes wandering, as if to know Why one beloved face should be So long from home and Acadie.

Was it a year or lives ago We took the grasses in our hands, And caught the summer flying low Over the waving meadow lands, And held it there between our hands?

The while the river at our feet— A drowsy inland meadow stream— At set of sun the after-heat Made running gold, and in the gleam We freed our birch upon the stream.

There down along the elms at dusk We lifted dripping blade to drift, Through twilight scented fine like musk, Where night and gloom awhile uplift, Nor sunder soul and soul adrift.

And that we took into our hands Spirit of life or subtler thing— Breathed on us there, and loosed the bands Of death, and taught us, whispering, The secret of some wonder-thing.

Then all your face grew light, and seemed To hold the shadow of the sun; The evening faltered, and I deemed That time was ripe, and years had done Their wheeling underneath the sun.

So all desire and all regret, And fear and memory, were naught; One to remember or forget The keen delight our hands had caught; Morrow and yesterday were naught.

The night has fallen, and the tide.... Now and again comes drifting home, Across these aching barrens wide, A sigh like driven wind or foam: In grief the flood is bursting home.

WHY

For a name unknown, Whose fame unblown Sleeps in the hills For ever and aye;

For her who hears The stir of the years Go by on the wind By night and day;

And heeds no thing Of the needs of spring, Of autumn's wonder Or winter's chill;

For one who sees The great sun freeze, As he wanders a-cold From hill to hill;

And all her heart Is a woven part Of the flurry and drift Of whirling snow;

For the sake of two Sad eyes and true, And the old, old love So long ago.

THE UNRETURNING

The old eternal spring once more Comes back the sad eternal way, With tender rosy light before The going-out of day.

The great white moon across my door A shadow in the twilight stirs; But now forever comes no more That wondrous look of Hers.

A WINDFLOWER

Between the roadside and the wood, Between the dawning and the dew, A tiny flower before the sun, Ephemeral in time, I grew.

And there upon the trail of spring, Not death nor love nor any name Known among men in all their lands Could blur the wild desire with shame.

But down my dayspan of the year The feet of straying winds came by; And all my trembling soul was thrilled To follow one lost mountain cry.

And then my heart beat once and broke To hear the sweeping rain forebode Some ruin in the April world, Between the woodside and the road.

To-night can bring no healing now; The calm of yesternight is gone; Surely the wind is but the wind, And I a broken waif thereon.

IN LYRIC SEASON

The lyric April time is forth With lyric mornings, frost and sun; From leaguers vast of night undone Auroral mild new stars are born.

And ever at the year's return, Along the valleys gray with rime, Thou leadest as of old, where time Can naught but follow to thy sway.

The trail is far through leagues of spring, And long the quest to the white core Of harvest quiet, yet once more I gird me to the old unrest.

I know I shall not ever meet Thy still regard across the year, And yet I know thou wilt draw near, When the last hour of pain and loss

Drifts out to slumber, and the deeps Of nightfall feel God's hand unbar His lyric April, star by star, And the lost twilight land reveal.

THE PENSIONERS

We are the pensioners of Spring, And take the largess of her hand When vassal warder winds unbar The wintry portals of her land;

The lonely shadow-girdled winds, Her seraph almoners, who keep This little life in flesh and bone With meagre portions of white sleep.

Then all year through with starveling care We go on some fool's idle quest, And eat her bread and wine in thrall To a fool's shame with blind unrest.

Until her April train goes by, And then because we are the kin Of every hill flower on the hill We must arise and walk therein.

Because her heart as our own heart, Knowing the same wild upward stir, Beats joyward by eternal laws, We must arise and go with her;

Forget we are not where old joys Return when dawns and dreams retire; Make grief a phantom of regret, And fate the henchman of desire;

Divorce unreason from delight; Learn how despair is uncontrol, Failure the shadow of remorse, And death a shudder of the soul.

Yea, must we triumph when she leads. A little rain before the sun, A breath of wind on the road's dust, The sound of trammeled brooks undone,

Along red glinting willow stems The year's white prime, on bank and stream The haunting cadence of no song And vivid wanderings of dream,

A range of low blue hills, the far First whitethroat's ecstasy unfurled: And we are overlords of change, In the glad morning of the world,

Though we should fare as they whose life Time takes within his hands to wring Between the winter and the sea, The weary pensioners of Spring.

AT THE VOICE OF A BIRD

_Consurgent ad vocem volucris._

Call to me, thrush, When night grows dim, When dreams unform And death is far!

When hoar dews flush On dawn's rathe brim, Wake me to hear Thy wildwood charm,

As a lone rush Astir in the slim White stream where sheer Blue mornings are.

Stir the keen hush On twilight's rim When my own star Is white and clear.

Fly low to brush Mine eyelids grim, Where sleep and storm Will set their bar;

For God shall crush Spring balm for him, Stark on his bier Past fault or harm,

Who once, as flush Of day might skim The dusk, afar In sleep shall hear

Thy song's cool rush With joy rebrim The world, and calm The deep with cheer.

Then, Heartsease, hush! If sense grow dim, Desire shall steer Us home from far.

WHEN THE GUELDER ROSES BLOOM

When the Guelder roses bloom, Love, the vagrant, wanders home.

Love, that died so long ago, As we deemed, in dark and snow,

Comes back to the door again, Guendolen, Guendolen.

In his hands a few bright flowers, Gathered in the earlier hours,

Speedwell-blue, and poppy-red, Withered in the sun and dead,

With a history to each, Are more eloquent than speech.

In his eyes the welling tears Plead against the lapse of years.

And that mouth we knew so well, Hath a pilgrim's tale to tell.

Hear his litany again: "Guendolen, Guendolen!"

"No, love, no, thou art a ghost! Love long since in night was lost.

"Thou art but the shade of him, For thine eyes are sad and dim."

"Nay, but they will shine once more, Glad and brighter than before,

"If thou bring me but again To my mother Guendolen!

"These dark flowers are for thee, Gathered by the lonely sea.

"And these singing shells for her Who first called me wanderer,

"In whose beauty glad I grew, When this weary life was new."

Hear him raving! "It is I. Love once born can never die."

"Thou, poor love, thou art gone mad With the hardships thou hast had.

"True, it is the spring of year, But thy mother is not here.

"True, the Guelder roses bloom As long since about this room,

"Where thy blessed self was born In the early golden morn

"But the years are dead, good lack! Ah, love, why hast thou come back,

"Pleading at the door again, 'Guendolen, Guendolen'?"

When the Guelder roses bloom, And the vernal stars resume

Their old purple sweep and range, I can hear a whisper strange

As the wind gone daft again, "Guendolen, Guendolen!"

"When the Guelder roses blow, Love that died so long ago,

"Why wilt thou return so oft, With that whisper sad and soft

"On thy pleading lips again, 'Guendolen, Guendolen'!"

Still the Guelder roses bloom, And the sunlight fills the room,

Where love's shadow at the door Falls upon the dusty floor.

And his eyes are sad and grave With the tenderness they crave,

Seeing in the broken rhyme The significance of time,

Wondrous eyes that know not sin From his brother death, wherein

I can see thy look again, Guendolen, Guendolen.

And love with no more to say, In this lovely world to-day

Where the Guelder roses bloom, Than the record on a tomb,

Only moves his lips again, "Guendolen, Guendolen!"

Then he passes up the road From this dwelling, where he bode

In the by-gone years. And still, As he mounts the sunset hill

Where the Guelder roses blow With their drifts of summer snow,

I can hear him, like one dazed At a phantom he has raised,

Murmur o'er and o'er again, "Guendolen, Guendolen!"

And thus every year, I know, When the Guelder roses blow,

Love will wander by my door, Till the spring returns no more;

Till no more I can withstand, But must rise and take his hand

Through the countries of the night, Where he walks by his own sight,

To the mountains of a dawn That has never yet come on,

Out of this fair land of doom Where the Guelder roses bloom,

Till I come to thee again, Guendolen, Guendolen.

SEVEN THINGS

The fields of earth are sown From the hand of the striding rain, And kernels of joy are strewn Abroad for the harrow of pain.

I.

The first song-sparrow brown That wakes the earliest spring, When time and fear sink down, And death is a fabled thing.

II.

The stealing of that first dawn Over the rosy brow, When thy soul said, "World, fare on, For Heaven is here and now!"

III.

The crimson shield of the sun On the wall of this House of Doom, With the garb of war undone At last in the narrow room.

IV.

A heart that abides to the end, As the hills for sureness and peace, And is neither weary to wend Nor reluctant at last of release.

V.

Thy mother's cradle croon To haunt thee over the deep, Out of the land of Boon Into the land of Sleep.

VI.

The sound of the sea in storm, Hearing its captain cry, When the wild, white riders form, And the Ride to the Dark draws nigh.

VII.

But last and best, the urge Of the great world's desire, Whose being from core to verge Only attains to aspire.

A SEA CHILD

The lover of child Marjory Had one white hour of life brim full; Now the old nurse, the rocking sea, Hath him to lull.

The daughter of child Marjory Hath in her veins, to beat and run, The glad indomitable sea, The strong white sun.

PULVIS ET UMBRA

There is dust upon my fingers, Pale gray dust of beaten wings, Where a great moth came and settled From the night's blown winnowings.

Harvest with her low red planets Wheeling over Arrochar; And the lonely hopeless calling Of the bell-buoy on the bar,

Where the sea with her old secret Moves in sleep and cannot rest. From that dark beyond my doorway, Silent the unbidden guest

Came and tarried, fearless, gentle, Vagrant of the starlit gloom, One frail waif of beauty fronting Immortality and doom;

Through the chambers of the twilight Roaming from the vast outland, Resting for a thousand heart-beats In the hollow of my hand.

"Did the volley of a thrush-song Lodge among some leaves and dew Hillward, then across the gloaming This dark mottled thing was you?

"Or is my mute guest whose coming So unheralded befell From the border wilds of dreamland, Only whimsy Ariel,

"Gleaning with the wind, in furrows Lonelier than dawn to reap, Dust and shadow and forgetting, Frost and reverie and sleep?

"In the hush when Cleopatra Felt the darkness reel and cease, Was thy soul a wan blue lotus Laid upon her lips for peace?

"And through all the years that wayward Passion in one mortal breath, Making thee a thing of silence, Made thee as the lords of death?

"Or did goblin men contrive thee In the forges of the hills Out of thistle-drift and sundown Lost amid their tawny rills,

"Every atom on their anvil Beaten fine and bolted home, Every quiver wrought to cadence From the rapture of a gnome?

"Then the lonely mountain wood-wind, Straying up from dale to dale, Gave thee spirit, free forever, Thou immortal and so frail!

"Surely thou art not that sun-bright Psyche, hoar with age, and hurled On the northern shore of Lethe, To this wan Auroral world!

"Ghost of Psyche, uncompanioned, Are the yester-years all done? Have the oars of Charon ferried All thy playmates from the sun?

"In thy wings the beat and breathing Of the wind of life abides, And the night whose sea-gray cohorts Swing the stars up with the tides.

"Did they once make sail and wander Through the trembling harvest sky, Where the silent Northern streamers Change and rest not till they die?

"Or from clouds that tent and people The blue firmamental waste, Did they learn the noiseless secret Of eternity's unhaste?

"Where learned they to rove and loiter, By the margin of what sea? Was it with outworn Demeter, Searching for Persephone?

"Or did that girl-queen behold thee In the fields of moveless air? Did these wings which break no whisper Brush the poppies in her hair?

"Is it thence they wear the pulvil— Ash of ruined days and sleep, And the two great orbs of splendid Melting sable deep on deep!

"Pilot of the shadow people, Steering whither by what star Hast thou come to hapless port here, Thou gray ghost of Arrochar?"

For man walks the world with mourning Down to death, and leaves no trace, With the dust upon his forehead, And the shadow in his face.

Pillared dust and fleeing shadow As the roadside wind goes by, And the fourscore years that vanish In the twinkling of an eye.

Beauty, the fine frosty trace-work Of some breath upon the pane; Spirit, the keen wintry moonlight Flashed thereon to fade again.

Beauty, the white clouds a-building When God said and it was done; Spirit, the sheer brooding rapture Where no mid-day brooks no sun.

So. And here, the open casement Where my fellow-mate goes free; Eastward, the untrodden star-road And the long wind on the sea.

What's to hinder but I follow This my gypsy guide afar, When the bugle rouses slumber Sounding taps on Arrochar?

"Where, my brother, wends the by-way, To what bourne beneath what sun, Thou and I are set to travel Till the shifting dream be done?

"Comrade of the dusk, forever I pursue the endless way Of the dust and shadew kindred, Thou art perfect for a day.

"Yet from beauty marred and broken, Joy and memory and tears, I shall crush the clearer honey In the harvest of the years.

"Thou art faultless as a flower Wrought of sun and wind and snow, I survive the fault and failure. The wise Fates will have it so.

"For man walks the world in twilight, But the morn shall wipe all trace Of the dust from off his forehead, And the shadow from his face.

"Cheer thee on, my tidings-bearer! All the valor of the North Mounts as soul from flesh escaping Through the night, and bids thee forth.

"Go, and when thou hast discovered Her whose dark eyes match thy wings, Bid that lyric heart beat lighter For the joy thy beauty brings."

Then I leaned far out and lifted My light guest up, and bade speed On the trail where no one tarries That wayfarer few will heed.

Pale gray dust upon my fingers; And from this my cabined room The white soul of eager message Racing seaward in the gloom.

Far off shore, the sweet low calling Of the bell-buoy on the bar, Warning night of dawn and ruin Lonelily on Arrochar.

THROUGH THE TWILIGHT

The red vines bar my window way; The Autumn sleeps beside his fire, For he has sent this fleet-foot day A year's march back to bring to me One face whose smile is my desire, Its light my star.